If you’re unfamiliar with the “freshman 15,” it’s all about that first year of college…. Too much pizza and beer. A lot of stress. And 15 pounds gained.

Nothing in the Thriving Nonprofit Facebook group (my free Facebook group for nonprofit staff and board leaders which you can join here) has ever struck a chord quite like this. 371 likes and counting.

Plus, more than 80 folks weighed in with comments (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun.) I have a feeling they’ll resonate with you.

“Per year?”

“Those long nights are comforted with food. Nobody told me.”

“Or the one meal per 14 hour day which may be at 9 pm and will be fast food, because it’s easy and you’re starving. The rest is sugar and caffeine.”

“Grrreaattt. another job perk!”

“It’s all the drinking”

“Make it 40 for me!”

“Totally real. I think it’s from being chained to the desk for 40+ hours per week, stress, and being to tired to cook good food when I get home. Chipotle has been very accommodating since this job started.”

“Don’t forget the ED blood pressure meds & antidepressant lol or is that just me?”

“For me, first time ED following the founder… ED 35, migraines, bronchitis, six months chronic back pain, some other stuff I can’t remember. Trying to get some sort of handle on managing the stress and pressure, and loneliness.”

“The comments on this thread are crazy. I really thought it was just me.”

While some of these comments illustrate the sense of humor that I really appreciate in nonprofit leaders, others border on heartbreaking. Folks are working their asses off (hope I’m not offending anyone but that feels like the real deal phrase) and working themselves into the ground.

I get it. I know I work too hard too. Just the other day I wrote the words “self care” and for some reason my iPhone autocorrected to “self scare”.

Clearly, many of you are stressed out beyond all reason. It’s not healthy and it’s not good.

But what can we do about it?

This topic is a big part of my upcoming free workshop, How to Build a Thriving Nonprofit, which starts on October 4. After all, you can’t thrive if you’re overwhelmed, stressed out, or if you feel completely alone. If you’re feeling those things, I invite you to please reserve a spot so I can help you.

I also want to say a few things about this here in the blog that I hope will help.

There is something wonderfully unique about small nonprofits. Sometimes they are one-person shops – not a lot of bureaucracy. There is often a camaraderie – together as a community you are fighting for clients, for their needs, for what is right and just.

Here’s what I have learned. The only thing small about a small nonprofit is its size.

But with that size also comes some unique challenges. Maybe you recognize some of these in yourself or your organization?

Your mission is bigger than your bank account

You believe you can’t ever take a vacation because if you missed even just a few days all the work would literally stop

You have an overwhelming feeling that everything rests on your shoulders but still think it’s easier to try to do everything yourself then ask somebody for help. Who would you even ask?

You feel frustrated about your inability to get the word out given your limited resources and time

Your board isn’t stepping up or is made up of the wrong mix of people. Or they mean well but they just don’t know what to do next.

Just this week, I got an email from an Executive Director of a small nonprofit – the board voted to close down the organization because of its inability and skepticism about raising money.

Board and staff leaders of small nonprofits throw their hearts and souls into the work, feel totally responsible, wildly overwhelmed, and far too often like the “man behind the curtain” – the imposter behind the Great and Powerful Oz.

And there’s another thing that makes it especially tough for a small nonprofit. Not a dime for outside help. No coaching, no consulting, no supportive community. Little opportunity to learn from others, to secure a mentor and feel more competent, in control and less alone.

One of my early forays into therapy was in 1997 when I became the Executive Director of GLAAD. I remember my first day in my new therapist’s office and of course she asked, “Why are you here?” My answer came quickly. “I like to solve problems for people – I’m a helper – but I’ve gone overboard. Now I feel like I have to take care of all the gay people everywhere.”

I bet many of you feel this way. Not necessarily about gay people. But about all the cats who haven’t been adopted, or the community center you know would benefit so many, or the marginalized groups you lobby for, or the communities of faith you support with your work.

It’s a lot of pressure. And as I have been known to say, a profound privilege.

I wish I had the antidote for the tremendous pressure and overwhelming responsibility.

I pulled a fortune from a fortune cookie a few years back. I keep it with me. It kinda said it all. “The best advice to follow is the advice you give to others.”

My team will tell you I’m frequently overdoing it. I feel like so many people are counting on me. I remember thinking about all the gays and it would stress me out. Now staff and board leaders of 1.5 million nonprofits? OY. And that’s just here in the U.S.

It takes its toll. I work at the expense of my hobbies, my health, my relationships.

Crazy, right? People I don’t know take priority over my loved ones.

And so my wife and I (just the two of us) spent the last two weeks at a health boot camp. It wasn’t fun. And I am abundantly aware that only Type A workaholics select ‘vacations’ of this sort. Well, and also folks whose health is at risk. My wife and I check both boxes.

We reset our health. We ate without salt, sugar and oil. We were up at 6:30 am daily. An hour of cardio, an hour of strength training, an hour of yoga and then lectures about what happens to your body with age, with stress.

I’d like to share some of the lessons I learned. Few folks will have the privilege of spending two weeks as we did but I can share the lessons. Some of them are personal – most of these unflattering. Some more global – educational and hopefully helpful.

And while I write about these lessons from my own perspective (female of a certain age) they apply to all of us.Continue Reading

She consults nonprofits and coaches a few lucky individuals. She’s a keynote speaker at major nonprofit events.

Plus, she recently launched the Nonprofit Leadership Lab where nearly a thousand leaders – staff and board – are getting much needed and ongoing mentorship, training, and support. Joan creates much of the content for the Lab and is a constant presence in the Lab’s community.

[As an aside, we’re opening the doors to the Lab again soon. If you’re interested in learning more about it or joining the waiting list, click here.]

But here’s something you might not know. For the most part, her company is “virtual.” What does that mean?

My daughter tells me to never use Wikipedia as a source (that’s what they taught her in school) but she doesn’t read the stuff I write, so…

Wikipedia says a virtual organization is “an organization involving detached and disseminated entities (from employees to entire enterprises) and requiring information technology to support their work and communication.”

In the nearly five years since Joan first hired my company to help her launch her business and build her brand, we probably haven’t been in the same room more than ten times. In fact, we worked together for more than six months – quite successfully – before we ever met in person. And that only happened because Joan invited me to guest lecture for her class at the University of Pennsylvania.

Oh yeah… did I mention that on top of everything else, Joan is also an adjunct professor at an Ivy League university? Busy.

It has become increasingly common for any organization to have remote staff and run virtually.

And when it comes to nonprofits, it’s in the DNA. After all, even if you don’t have remote employees (and you probably do) board members don’t typically work at nonprofit HQ.

Several folks in the Nonprofit Leadership Lab recently asked if we could recommend the best tools to help facilitate communications and project management when people aren’t in the same physical space.

And so today I’m going to share with you the three most important tools we use at Joan Garry Consulting, all of which are quite affordable.

Each of these tools can have a big and positive impact at your nonprofit.Continue Reading

“He is excellent at his job – he’s just arrogant and uncivil to his colleagues.”

“I’m not sure I’ve really been clear – maybe I need to do a better job.”

“It just feels so cruel to fire someone and it would hurt staff morale too much.”

Or the one I hear most often.

“Our organization is like a family – I just can’t.”

Well nonprofit leader, YES YOU CAN.

It’s not a family. No one is a sacred cow. A person is not doing an ‘excellent’ job if he treats people in your organization so poorly it impacts their job satisfaction.

I know it’s tough, but today it is time to put on your big boy and big girl pants and just do it. It’s necessary for the health of your organization.

It is time to take a good hard look at the folks on your bus. You have folks (board and staff) who are rockstars. You would weep if they asked to get off the bus. There are also folks you’re just not sure about.

Here’s how to deal with the folks who really just need to get off at the next stop.Continue Reading

Far too often, Matthew O’Reilly would sit in the back of an ambulance, rushing a patient to the hospital but knowing full well that the patient wasn’t going to make it. And the patient knew it too.

Often, the patient – a complete and total stranger – would look Matthew in the eye and ask the simple question: Will you remember me?

I saw Matthew’s moving TED talk live in 2014 and his words have stayed with me. They were heartbreaking.

Many nonprofits are started by families who have lost loved ones, often as a result of a tragedy, a health issue, a violent crime, a terror attack. Far too often, these loved ones were taken far too soon.

And so today I want to introduce you to two folks, Kari Pepper-McKeone and Todd Crawford. Both started nonprofits following a personal tragedy. You really need to hear their stories.

They have lessons to teach those who stand in similar shoes. And that’s a whole lot of us at some point in our lives.

Kari’s and Todd’s stories can help us make sense of those times in all of our lives when we ask ourselves these questions. How can I make sure that some good comes from this tragedy? How do I make sense of this? How do I create some kind of legacy?

Thank you for being a reader of my blog. I am so grateful that my posts resonate with you and so many other nonprofit leaders. Truly.

But this blog is hardly the only one you should read. There are a whole lot of really smart and terrific folks in the nonprofit sector that have an awful lot to share. And they write great nonprofit blogs.

So today I want to share with you 10 nonprofit blogs that are written by other people that you ought to be following.

But there really are a lot more than 10 great nonprofit blogs out there! Which ones should I mention? And so, I decided to get a little bit of help.

Last month, I launched The Nonprofit Leadership Lab, an online membership site for leaders of small to midsized nonprofits that want to take their nonprofits from “messy” to “thriving.” The Lab offers ongoing education, support, and community. We have nearly 1,000 members currently and registration will open again before too long so stay tuned. If you want to be notified when the Lab is opening again, you can jump onto the waiting list.

The Lab members teach me as much as we offer them. If I have a question, I post it in the Lab community and voila – an embarrassment of riches in terms of ideas and insights. The road absolutely runs both ways.

And so I decided to ask the Lab members to share their favorite go-to nonprofit blogs.

I learned some powerful stuff. For example, 1.25 million people in the country are afflicted with Type 1 Diabetes, or “T1D,” and there are 40,000 new diagnoses annually, largely in children. It changes their lives and their families’ lives forever.

Something about the conference felt like a family reunion. It kinda was.

Now I’m not saying that everyone there had a family member living with T1D but a heck of a lot did.

Here were hundreds of men and women, fierce advocates for the eradication of T1D. Wonderful people.

But when you are too insular it’s a big problem. Nonprofits must think more broadly about who to engage in their work and the challenges being insular can create.

I spoke to the Chief Development Officer and the page is beginning to turn. There is a growing realization that if you want to raise the kinds of funds necessary for critical research and for lobbying elected officials to push for more government funding, you simply have to fish in more ponds.

A lot of folks feel stuck in this way. They know how to ask the usual folks to volunteer their time or give money. But not how their nonprofits can expand the pool.

Pool… ponds… sorry for mixing my metaphors. But they just both work so well.

Here are five ways you can expand your pool of donors, volunteers, staff members, and board members too.Continue Reading

First, it happens that I like kids. Though – as an aside – the folks who work in management at schools tend not to actually deal with the kids all that often.

But there’s another reason I enjoy it so much. It’s because they do extremely important work, but there’s a structural issue that comes up over and over and makes things deliciously messy.

And you know I like to help clean up nonprofit messes!

What’s the structural issue? It’s that when teachers get promoted to become department heads, often they have never really been taught how to be good managers. They get promoted because they were rock stars at teaching. But that’s not the same thing.

Sometimes a young teacher-rock-star-turned-department-head with no experience managing now has former department heads reporting to her! Messy.

So in the spirit of school, I’m going to turn to one of our favorite metaphors in the nonprofit world… the bus.

I am not sure why the nonprofit sector uses the ‘bus’ as a metaphor so often. We have to ‘get the right people on the bus.’ We have to have a plan in case the executive director gets “hit by a bus.”

I blame Jim Collins for popularizing the term “on the bus” in his book, Good to Great. But it probably goes back further than that.

It’s not that we all love buses so much. School bus rides were loud, and without shock absorbers, nauseating. And then there are commuter buses and the bus drivers who seemed to have learned that the goal was to make the ride more miserable by hitting the brakes as hard and as often as they could.

The only people that ever seemed to have a lot of fun on a bus were the members of The Partridge Family. (And if not for copyright issues, that would be the image for this post).

But for whatever reason, we seem to be stuck with the bus. So let’s play the hand we seem to have been dealt.

Have you ever felt like you’re surrounded by a whole bunch of incompetent “do-nothings” and you always have to do everything yourself. At least if you want it done well? Maybe you don’t have the right people.

Board members don’t typically get performance evaluations and neither do volunteers. For staff, I do hope you do something that is constructive with each person each year.

But now I want you to throw all these people together on your bus. Metaphorically. Regardless of category.

And I’m going to show you:

That your bus may be way better than you think

A quick and easy way to assess the folks on your bus

Actionable steps to make your bus a whole lot stronger and make sure you keep the right people in their seats.

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About Me

Joan Garry is a non profit consultant with a practice focusing on crisis management, executive coaching, and building strong board and staff leadership teams. She is also a professor at the Annenberg School for Communications at UPenn.